Currently, typical search engines, for example those in the on-line travel industry, only use one search provider. For example, an on-line travel website may obtain airline flight information from a third party and maintain their own database of flight information to perform searches against. In addition, rather than maintaining their own database, an on-line travel website may use the search services provided by a computerized reservations system (CRS) or a global distribution system (GDS). However, there are various problems inherent in the use of only a single search provider, whether it is an internally maintained database, a CRS, or a GDS.
For example, there may be data that is not publicly available through a single search provider. In the travel industry for example, access to information regarding low cost carriers (LCCs) is only available through the CRS that hosts the LCC and would not be accessible if the on-line travel site were to maintain their own database or use another CRS or GDS. Therefore, the search results obtained by a travel website that maintained their own database or used a particular CRS or GDS would not necessarily be complete.
In addition, dramatic increases in search activity may decrease the performance of an individual search provider. For example, if a travel site were to use a particular CRS or GDS to perform searches and the CRS or GDS has a increase in search activity at any given time, the search requests from the travel site may be delayed or denied.
Finally, the information available in an internal database or through a particular CRS or GDS may not always be the most up to date information available. For example, if an airport were to close down at some point during the day due to weather or other circumstances, the travel website that maintained their own database would probably continue to provide search results for that airport, even though flights to and from those airports are no longer available.
Therefore, it would be beneficial to have a system and method for performing data searches, especially in the on-line travel industry, that could support the use of multiple search providers to provide more consistent, complete, and accurate search results.